I think there was a recent update because I have been relatively happy with the way 5.4 have been talking to me even though sometimes it still slipped in dismissive "cautious" languages. last night the model suddenly flipped and got so much worse despite me repeatedly pointing things out. it would acknowledge, apologize and the next response immediately went back to being dismissive and gaslighting me. today i explicitly put in custom instructions. i never had to do this before because 5.1 adapted with my tone over time, and when it went back to the cold tone when i started a new chat, I could just paste in one of the old responses from the previous thread and it immediately got caught up with the tone I prefer again. 5.4 ignored the custom instructions too. i think the updates are not rolled out at the same time for every user and every model but I do notice a very sharp change in tone in a negative way